Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 2025

I am thankful for a lot of things, too many to list in the time between now and time to load the food into the truck and hit the road to dinner at my brother's house.  Later, we'll have another dinner at my son's house.

I still have to bake the sweet potato casserole.

I'm a little worried about the sweet potato dumplings.  I wrapped the sweet potatoes in dough and baked them yesterday.  This morning, I made the yummy cream sauce to pour over them.  This is not what the recipe said to do.  The recipe said to pour the yummy cream sauce over the UNBAKED dumplings, sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon, and THEN bake them.  

I made this dish according to the recipe last week, when The Husband had to take a dish to the office Thanksgiving dinner.  They were ok.  I baked them on a sheet pan instead of in a casserole dish, and the wider pan left more of the dumpling tops sticking above the sauce, which worked out well.  The cinnamon and sugar on the dumpling tops made a nice crust.  But the parts that were below the sauce were a little gummy.  

I can't decide whether to pour the sauce over the dumplings (which are now nestled together in a casserole dish) or heat the sauce and let folks pour it over the dumplings.  The dumplings, by themselves, are kind of blah.  I should have rolled the sweet potatoes in a cinnamon/sugar mixture before I wrapped them in dough.  Without the sauce, they are just a sweet potato in a roll.  

It would be nice to preserve the brown crust on the rolls, but I think I will just to ahead and pour the sauce over them, bake them, and re-heat them when it's time to eat.

Looking forward to today.  After dinner with Son #1, we'll go across the street to Son #2's house.  Granddaughter #1 is home from college.

Sweet Potatoes - November 26, 2025

There's cooking to be done today.  We'll be attending a Thanksgiving dinner around noon, and another around 5.  I am taking dishes to both.  Sweet potato casserole and spinach dip to my brother's house, and sweet potato dumplings and pecan casserole to my son's house.  

The sweet potatoes are in the oven now. 

Historically, I boiled the sweet potatoes.  I never, ever drop a sweet potato into a pot of water that I don't think about Nanny and The Husband's grandmother, Mama J.  (She was a card.)   

The three of us were sitting at the kitchen table, discussing a recipe for sweet potato pie.  I was probably 30 years old hadn't had a lot of experience cooking from scratch.  I commented that the only problem with sweet potatoes was that they were so hard to peel.  Mama J said, "Boil 'em, first."  

It was like the heaven's opened up.  I heard angels singing.  

Evidently, Nanny had that same experience, for she exclaimed, "MAMA J!  You could have told me that THIRTY YEARS AGO!"

Cracked me up.

The angels sang for me again this morning as I was washing sweet potatoes, preparing to boil them.  

My biggest pan is in the refrigerator, half full of chicken noodle soup.  As I was taking a bowl out of the cabinet, planning to transfer the soup to the bowl so that I could use the pan for the sweet potatoes, it occurred to me that I could BAKE them instead of boiling them.

I hope there is not some down-side to baking vs. boiling that I have not considered.  I couldn't think of any, except a possible difference in texture.  We'll see.  

This year, for the first time, I bought bagged sweet potatoes instead of loose ones.  It was a mistake.  Whereas I can choose loose potatoes of similar size, the bagged potatoes came in a variety of sizes.  The little ones will be done far earlier than the big ones.  I've set a timer to remind me to check them early.

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday, I spent most of the day fooling with Christmas cards.  During the past year, my watercolor practice produced a stack of 4" x 6" mini-paintings, just the right size for attaching to 5" x 7" greeting cards.  Yesterday, I gathered up the best of the Christmas-themed ones, stuck them to cards, and addressed them to friends and relatives.  This morning, I found a few more.  They'll have to wait until Friday.  

Herbs - November 24, 2025

In the sewing room, the embroidery machine is stitching out some gift tags for a friend.  They're felt tags, with metal eyelets for ribbons.  This is the second batch I've made; I sort of screwed up the eyelets on the first batch, so I'm trying again, being a little wiser this time.  

In the new planter, greens are coming up like crazy.  So far, nothing has dug in the dirt, but there are strange humps raised up, here and there.  I can't figure out what's making them, for I smoothed the dirt evenly when I finished planting.  Now that I think about it, though, there are some potato peelings (and other kitchen scraps) between the dirt and the leaves.  If those humps are the result of potatoes trying to sprout, I'm going to be kind of pissed, for I did not put them in there to make plants and grow potatoes.  

Walking around in the yard for the past couple of weeks, I spied all sorts of green growth on the ground.  Weeds, you know.  I finally decided to research these weeds and discovered that almost all of them have some medicinal benefits.  There's a phenomenal patch of chickweed growing in one of the flower beds.  I've been letting it grow simply because it's kind of pretty (if I'd planted it on purpose, I'd be proud of it).  Come to find out, the stuff is good to eat and good for topical applications.  The yard is full of "dead nettle."  It, too, is good for medicine.  Yesterday, I cut some and started a tincture to include in some salve I intend to make.

I haven't yet done anything with the cherry bark that I peeled last week.  

But I have cute tins to put salve in . . . if I ever make any.

* * * * * * * *

It's a dreary, rainy, somewhat chilly day.  At 1:00, I braved the elements to run errands.  First on my list was to mail a package to a friend.  When I got to the shipping store, I found that I'd left out the Christmas card I'd intended to include in the package.  Oh, well, I'll whack a stamp on it and put it in the mail tomorrow.  The second errand was to pick up The Husband's drugstore prescription.  When I got home and opened the bag, I discovered that they'd given me the wrong prescription, some nausea suppositories for my son, whose first name is the same as The Husband's and who lives across the road from us.  Little Miss at the counter didn't pay attention to the street number I gave her.  Next stop, the post office to buy stamps for the Christmas cards I've painted.  The clerk at the counter - the same one I wanted to shank the last time I visited the post office - barely had time to help me because of her conversation with someone around the corner.  When the postal display gave me the "how did we do?" choice of a frowny face, a meh face, or a smiley face, I chose the meh face.  And considered it a generosity.

Final stop, the grocery store, to get Bisquick for the chicken & dumplings I intend to make for dinner.  I hadn't had lunch and wanted everything I saw, so the Bisquick ended up costing me $33.00.

Greens - November 19, 2025

Last week, as I was making an online grocery order, an ad popped up for a 4' x 2' x 1' oval galvanized raised bed.  On sale, $30.  It came in pieces in a box that was about a cubic foot square, along with a bag of dozens of bolts and wing nuts.  The Husband and I put it together in about 30 minutes.  Yesterday, I set it on top of a big piece of cardboard, filled it with chopped leaves and store-bought dirt, and planted mustard, collards, and turnip greens in it.  As I was about to wash up after the planting, I spied a package of carrot seeds left over from last year, which I sprinkled over the bed for the heck of it.  Mother Nature watered it a little bit last night. According to gardening guru Uncle Jack, it's about 2 months late for planting greens.  We'll see what happens.

Squirrels will probably plant acorns in it.  

Last night, WHILE I WAS COOKING DINNER, the blood blister on my thumb (which I got earlier in the day from peeling wild cherry tree bark) started leaking.  I squished out the rest of the blood, put a waterproof band-aid on it, and kept working while trying not to touch he food.  Unfortunately, the task at hand was to wrap crescent roll dough around sliced cooked sweet potatoes, hard to do without two thumbs.  

The cherry bark shavings are drying on the kitchen table.  I'm going to grind half of them into powder and keep the other half intact for brewing tea.

The problem with fooling with new things is that it sends me down multiple rabbit holes before I ever accomplish a thing.  This morning, I watched a video on how to make salve (I've already got the base ingredients).  When the instructor finished combining everything, he poured the warm mixture into little tins.  I've got some little jars, but they're not cute.  I added tins to my Hobby Lobby list.  Then he put cute little round labels on the tins.  I added cute little round labels to my list.  Then I started working out a cute little design to go on the cute little labels . . . and I haven't even made the salve, yet.  

Wild Cherry Tree - November 18, 2025

There's a wild cherry tree growing 10 feet from our driveway.  The first time I noticed it, it was 3 feet tall.  I figured if I simply cut it to the ground, it would become a bush; it needed to be dug up by the roots.  I never got around to it.  Now, it's taller than our house, and its truck is as big around as my thigh, and it's gone long past digging up.

For years, I've said to The Husband, "We ought to cut that tree down before it tears up the driveway or falls on the house."

He'll say, "Yep."  

And the tree still stands.

This morning, "the algorithm" fed me a video about making cough syrup out of wild cherry bark.

The Husband has a cold.  

I think I'll make him some cough medicine.

* * * * * * * 

Caution:  Stripping cherry bark with a pocketknife can be hazardous to the thumb.  

Blood blister.  

Homemade Bread - November 17, 2025

I was especially useful in the kitchen last week.  Around Wednesday, I made a big pot of vegetable beef soup.  We had it for dinner that night and the next.  Friday, I sent some home with a daughter-in-law.  We finished it off Saturday night, with fresh bread from the almost-forgotten bread machine under the cabinet.

Yesterday, I made another batch of bread and used it to make a double batch of cinnamon rolls.  They are not all that fabulous.  They needed a different bread recipe.  I can make a biscuit that you could float to someone across a table, but I don't know much about yeast bread.  Come to think of it, biscuit dough makes a fairly decent cinnamon roll.  ;)

* * * * * * * * 

I started the oil landscape late last week, got it blocked in and left it to dry.  Meanwhile, a daughter-in-law came over to use the t-shirt press, and I had to move all of the painting accoutrements off the table to make room for the machine.  "Out of sight, out of mind."  I haven't touched it since.  

Instead of oil painting, I have been having fun with watercolor.  Did a bunch of Christmas-y paintings for Christmas cards.  Yesterday, I tried to paint one that featured a miniature donkey in a stable.  Tried three times, in fact, and still didn't get it right.  Attempt #4 is drying on the kitchen table, awaiting the next details.  If I don't screw it up, this one might be a keeper.

Northern Lights - November 12, 2025

Well, after two days of really cold weather, it's supposed to be near 70 degrees today and for the rest of the week.  This is why you might see Tennesseans dressed in winter boots, shorts, and fur-lined hoodies over t-shirts.  You just never know what it'll take to be comfortable from one minute to the next.  ;)

The winter blast even affected Florida.  People on the beach were wrapped in blankets in broad daylight.  And here's something kind of hilarious:  the cold made salamanders fall out of trees.  Apparently, they got too cold to hang onto the limbs.  My grandfather once said that he'd seen it rain frogs, but I never believed it, even though he wasn't one to joke around.  Maybe I should reconsider, for years from now, people will be telling their grandchildren it rained salamanders and be telling the truth!  

Last night, we saw the Northern Lights.  Around 9 p.m., the Daughter-in-Law across the road texted and said they were behind Nanny's house.  The Husband and I went outside.  There was a faint blue glow to the northwest.  I wondered if it was just the searchlight from a towboat lighting up clouds.  I was cold and went inside.  A few minutes later, when I was getting ready for bed, The Husband came in and said, "Come outside!"  The sky had turned red, so red that I feared there might be a big fire somewhere.  But it was wavering and changing colors.  Our cell phones could capture better images than we could see with our naked eyes.  It was kind of awesome.

The Husband has gone on another work-related road trip today.  I considered going with him, but changed my mind.  After Saturday's road trip home, when some malfunction blocked interstate traffic for three hours, I've had enough time in the truck to last me for a while.  Next month we have an even longer road trip to do, and I'm already dreading it.

This morning, I'm trying to decide how to spend the next two days.  I need to buy groceries, but since I won't be cooking dinner tonight, it could wait another day.  And now that I think about it, I have enough stuff on hand to make vegetable beef soup, which would last us for a couple of days and push the grocery shopping even farther into the future.  ;)

I might paint, instead.

There's an 11" x 14" canvas, prepped and ready to go, on an easel on the sewing room table.  I've already sketched scenery for a landscape, using a photo from Sunday's walk-about as a reference:

All I need to do is squeeze out some paints and get to painting.  

First, I think I'll go out and take that same photograph while the sun is shining, as the colors will be more vibrant than they were Sunday, when it was cloudy.

Nix that idea.  I just went out to take a picture.  The windy cold snap nearly denuded the trees.  I'll just have to imagine what they would've looked like in the sun.  

But I think I can do that.  Maybe.